Cubbyhole Canteen

Doctors could do nothing with a brooding G.I. mental patient in Washington's St. Elizabeth's Hospital, until one of them noted on his medical records that he had once been a flutist in a symphony orchestra. They sent for a music teacher and a flute.

The soldier ignored the teacher, but took the flute off by himself. Soon he was playing it, and taking lessons daily. As the memory of music came, his despondency went. Last week he was discharged, a mentally healthy veteran.

The flute and the teacher (Mrs. Vitya Vronsky of the piano-team of Vronsky and Babin) were sent to the hospital by Washington's Music Canteen, an enterprise to make G.I.s their own entertainers.

Every weekend hundreds of soldiers and sailors, WAVES and WACs report to the Canteen for free music lessons and instruments to rehearse on. In a year, 45 volunteer teachers have given more than 3,000 lessons, and some 12,000 servicemen have practiced in the Canteen atop the Homer L. Kitt music store in downtown Washington. (The store donates the space, and keeps the 100-odd available instruments in repair.)

The Canteen's noisy weekends are coolly run by matronly Mrs. Harry Lee Virden, an Episcopal Army chaplain's wife, who assigns classic-minded musicians to practice rooms on the second floor, and jam fans to the third floor. The resultant uproar from the 28 unsoundproofed cubbyholes usually involves the trial flights of several singers, a dozen pianists, a hot accordion, strings and horns, all at once. One soldier motorcycles up from Ft. Belvoir (Va.) for violin lessons from Author Catherine Drinker Bowen (Yankee from Olympus).

Because it has a waiting list of 30 servicemen, the Canteen has a rigid rule: anybody who misses two lessons is dropped. Last week a sailor who had been absent twice and a soldier who had missed three lessons asked for, and got, reinstatement. Their excuse for being away: they had been to Potsdam.

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